Archibald Wavell

Archibald Percival Wavell (5 May 1883-24 May 1950) was the British Viceroy of British Raj from 1 October 1943 to 21 February 1947, succeeding Victor Hope and preceding Louis Mountbatten. Wavell served in the Second Boer War in South Africa (his father Archibald G. Wavell commanded the garrison of Johannesburg during the war), the 1908 punitive expedition against the Zakka Khel clan of Bazar Valley in Pakistan, World War I, and World War II, during which he was never given the chance to conduct military operations with forces that were truly adequate to the task. He was responsible for the defeats in Greece, Libya, Singapore, Indonesia, and Burma, leading to him being relegated to politics from the military.

Biography
The son of a general, Wavell was a career officer who lost an eye in World War I. Between the wars, he rose to senior command, and, in summer 1939, he was sent to organize British forces in the Middle East. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, Wavell faced numerically superior armies in North and East Africa. Even though the Italian forces were generally of poor quality, his success was still extraordinary. In Operation Compass, his desert forces seized Cyrenaica, taking more than 100,000 prisoners. The Italians were also defeated in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Wavell's popularity with the public ran high, but he offended Churchill with his blunt manner and pessimistic air. In February 1941, he agreed, against his better judgment, to divert troops from North Africa to Greece. There followed a string of disasters. Greece and Crete were lost, and so was Cyrenaica, overrun by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. Overstretched by simultaneous operations in Syria and Iraq, in June, Wavell mounted a new desert offensive, Operation Battleaxe. It was a costly failure, and Churchill transferred Wavell to a backwater as commander-in-chief in India.

War in Asia
The Japanese entry into the war thrust Wavell once more into the front line, again with inadequate resources. Briefly supreme commander of Allied forces in Southeast Asia, he presided over the loss of Singapore and Indonesia, and then had to retreat from Burma. In 1943, he became Viceroy of India.